Before I came to Peru, I often heard from other volunteers that during Peace Corps you had to learn to be alone. I never quite understood what this meant. I got that I would be here alone, working away from my friends and family, but other people would be around. So how would I be alone? And what would be so hard about that? I’ve always enjoyed being by myself. Mom would often joke about how easily I could entertain myself. I never needed anyone else around, and often times preferred to be alone. I would go to movies by myself, play basketball by myself, go on long drives, and during all this enjoy the solitude, the time to think. Being alone was a relief, a pause, one that calmed me down, brought me back to normal.
I have been here six months so far, and I am finally learning what the lonely is all the other volunteers were talking about. I have a family I live with, I have friends who I can call, and others who I can email. I’m not alone, so why do I feel lonely?
The lonely in Peace Corps is a loneliness of experience. Each day I experience new things, crazy things, and I have no one to share it with. At home, when something weird happens, you always pause to look around. Did anyone else see what I just saw? Is there anyone I am partaking in this with, who is experiencing the same thing? But here that is never the case. I can call someone and talk about it, but they don’t really understand. A common saying among volunteers is that everyone’s experience is different. And that’s true, it’s so true because everything I experience, I experience alone. I can call Teddy or Jonah and talk about the rainy season, the language barrier, or the customs I don’t understand, and they might know what I’m talking about, even have had a similar experience, but yet there is a difference. The experiences we talk of to one another are remote, far off. I can’t fully explain why I am frustrated walking into a room where all my clothes are moldy and there are leaks in the roof, because it’s something I experienced.
So what does it mean to have to learn to be alone? It doesn’t mean learning to keep my mind occupied, or myself busy. It doesn’t mean learning to be happy being in a room by myself. It means learning to experience things for myself, and being content in that. Knowing that I am going through this alone, and having that be enough, having myself be enough. There are many people who will have very similar experiences, but mine is uniquely my own. I can explain it, write about it, but I will never be able to share the experience fully.
All through my life, it seems I have been taught to value the relationships in my life. Nothing is worth having unless you can share it with those important to you. I’ve always agreed with this. I have great relationships, great friends, a great family, and because of this, many experiences in my life have been better. Getting into the same college as my best friend, bonding with friends through the major I chose, sharing the joy of graduating with my family and brothers, the people that allowed me to reach my goals. I still think the relationships we have are and will be the more important parts of our lives, but here I am learning to place more value in the relationship with myself.
Walt Whitman wrote a poem called I Saw In Louisiana A Live-Oak Growing, the final verses in this poem speak to the ideas of loneliness and relationships
“For all that, and though the live-oak glistens there in Louisi-
ana solitary in a wide flat space.
Uttering joyous leaves all its life without a friend a lover
near,
I know very well I could not.”
For most of life this holds true. But here, I am learning to be the live-oak. My joy comes as it will, separate from a need for the friend or lover. The experiences I gather here, will be my own, my reactions to them will be solely my own.
Learning to be alone is learning to experience for myself. Learning to be myself outside of the lens through which people in my life view me. Reacting as if I am in a vacuum, being happy about a project because I am happy with it, laughing at something that happens because I find it funny, being aware that I miss my friends and my family but knowing I am no different because of their absence. This also means learning what drives me, learning to push myself and meet my own goals, learning what I want out life. Learning to be alone is learning who I am.
